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I hope everyone has a magical Christmas Eve. I thought I would share a poem by Eileen Spinelli to help celebrate the feel of the season. You can visit Eileen at: www.eileenspinelli.com . Each month she shares a poem.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

4 Stars Seymour's Christmas Wish Jane Matyger Javier Duarte Mirror Publishing 28 Pages    Ages: 3 + ..................... ...................... Back Cover: Seymour, a tiny, tiny mouse, lives at the North Pole. Each Christmas Eve, he shines Rudolph’s red nose before Santa’s big trip. This year Seymour has a special wish . . . a wish that [...]

I had an inkling that Santa might take a break or two at a few houses to imbibe in some of his favorite snacks...

Merry Christmas...

Blessedly, some foods seem to have magical healing properties. When I left my family of origin, I needed to reconstruct some family traditions in order to reclaim them in an emotionally healthy way. One of the traditions that had to go was a big, fancy, mom-trapped-in-the- kitchen, crazy-making Christmas Eve meal. In the household where I am the mom, Christmas Eve dinner has always been pizza. It’s the one time of the year when no one has to share or compromise--everybody gets whatever toppings they want before Santa comes. Even if I wanted to change now, the kids wouldn’t let me. My children have always been pizza addicts, even as babies, and the last in line is the worst by far. Scarlett recently found the discarded lid to a banker’s box and, thinking that pizza was secretly being consumed without her, carried it around to each person in the house demanding to know where the “pee-zah” was. That’s how powerful the lure of the pie is. In Dayal Kaur Khalsa’s How Pizza Came To Queens, four little girls in the 1950s try to figure out what will make their sad Italian guest smile. She doesn’t speak English and they can only guess at what “pizza” (the one mournful word they can decipher) means. They even break down and visit the library, where they find the answer. They bring her the secret ingredients, she shows them the perfect toss, and they all spend the rest of the summer in pizza heaven.

It is two rooms away, waiting for me. The jumbo shrimp and the two pounds of mussels. The boneless chicken and the chicken stock. The short, white rice. The peas. The tomatoes. The white wine. The garlic. The magic golden red elixir, otherwise known as saffron. And in an hour, or maybe two or three, I'll unwrap and chop and marinate and begin preparing our traditional Christmas Eve paella.

Just now, in the dark, I am remembering friends. Those who have met life's hard challenges this year. Those grieving through loss. Those searching for a way to move past. Those living their lives with such grace and pluck that sometimes I cry for the sheer honorability of them, and for the smallness of my concerns set against theirs.

Just now I am remembering: This life of ours. This imperfect mix. This sheen and most essential gloss of Christmas.